Microsoft first announced the Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS) during Ignite 2015. OMS is a new set of service-based technologies with ready-made solutions that are delivered from the cloud. As the IT management solution for a cloud-first world, OMS was built in response to the increased complexity that organizations face in managing their workloads dispersed across platforms, environments, and the underlying cost structure.

Microsoft has been working with customers for over a year, and has previewed some of the services that have now been rolled up into OMS. Some of the underlying services have actually been around for much longer. OMS is the current state in the evolution of such products as System Center Advisor, and Operational Insights preview. What were these services?

System Center Advisor was an online service that analyzed installations of Microsoft server software, collected data from server installations, and reviewed configurations against best practices for configuration and usage. This service was eventually incorporated into Azure Operational Insights (OpInsights) Preview. In its inception, OpInsights preview was an analysis service that enabled organizations to glean insights from machine data collected through direct agent connections to the service, or using the service with one or more Operations Manager (SCOM) management groups. Azure Operational Insights is now generally available and a part of the Operations Management Suite (OMS).

Why should you care about OMS?

Simply put, because you’d like to be empowered to overcome the rut of every-day IT processes and tasks that add little or no value to your organization, and to champion transformations in your organization. The Microsoft Management Suite extends your System Center investments, simplifies management of your datacenter assets wherever they live, and enables you to have greater control and new capabilities across your hybrid cloud.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this slide from Jeremy Winter’s session BRK2459 at Microsoft Ignite 2015 sums up the idea behind this SaaS offering, and it’s worth a listen too!

What Can you Do With OMS?

This SaaS offering is in its inception, but you can expect to see new capabilities added to the suite in the near future.

At this time, the main focus scenarios are:

Log Analytics: This solution leverages the Azure Operational Insights service, and it consolidates the log analytics feature that was a key offering in OpInsights Preview. You can collect and search across multiple machine data sources to easily identify the root cause of operational issues, identify trends, and get from problem to remediation quicker

Automation: This solution leverages Azure Automation, and allows you to automate manual and frequently repeated tasks for more efficient and cost-effective hybrid cloud management. This solution will enable you to automate tasks across clouds, analyze your runbook jobs and use Hybrid Runbook Workers to run automation runbooks against your workloads. This solution

Availability: This leverages the Azure backup and Site Recovery services.This solution will enable you to backup and enable integrated recovery for all your servers and applications regardless of platform, and no matter where they reside.

Security: This solution combines the power of logging and indexing functionality available in underlying services to give you Identify malware status, review your security and audit states, and identify and remediate missing system updates, among others. Collect security related events and perform forensic, audit and breach analysis.

How Can you Start Using OMS?

You can try OMS for free. You will be prompted to create a Workspace, select a region for your workspace, and done! You would need to select your desired solutions from the gallery within the Workspace, but the onboarding process is seamless. Similarly, if you already had a OpInsights Preview account, your account would be moved to a Free Data plan. You would also be able to link your account to an Azure subscription, and change your data plan at anytime.

Author, consultant, strategist and thought leader who is passionate about data-driven management and architecture. Chiyo excels at helping clients think strategically about how to use technology to optimize the service delivery to the business, and to create fundamental business change and value.